Fractura Americana
(Also referred to as “The Way Down South of Dixie Victory”, “The House Divided” and “Bring the Jubilee”) Current Year: 1964''The Fractura Americana parallel is a world that in its Current Year is a century after there was total Confederate victory in the American Civil War. The American union was forever sundered as the South achieved independence in what has been called by some “the Second American Revolution”. The Confederacy broke off from the Union and further broke itself up into individual states and commonwealths of those states, operating collectively but still independent and free of the encroaching federal control that sparked the secession. Now 100 years later, in an era of rapidly advancing technology, corporate espionage and the looming threat of Communist expansionism, the house that was divided against itself still stands. The War Rewritten In 1856, Tennessee-born explorer and mercenary William Walker lead a successful private military conquest of Nicaragua with an army of only 74 men. Unlike in our Universe, in the Fractura Americana Parallel he is not deposed by a coalition of Central American armies in 1857, fleeing the country and then returning to try and take back the territory, only to be executed after being captured in 1860. Instead, funded by British and American investors that see a potential future in a US trading presence in Latin America, Walker’s investment in power is maintained and a truce is brokered with the neighboring territories. With the start of the American Civil War in April of 1861 with the attack on Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln orders a complete naval blockade of all major Southern ports under a proposal by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott in order to prevent the flow of trade for secessionist forces, just as in our Timeline. However, the presence of a secessionist-aligned nation-state in South America severely complicates this goal in this Universe. Walker’s hold on Nicaragua provides a stable and indispensably valuable way to bypass the Unionist blockade, providing Confederate troops with a steady flow of food, munitions and other supplies that dwindled during the conflict in our universe. Winfield Scott’s so-called “Anaconda Plan” is a complete failure. Southern cotton is exchanged for British rifles and French canons and black powder via the Nicaragua route, drawing European powers further into the conflict and laying the groundwork for future diplomacy. As the American Civil War progresses, the familiar stream of Unionist victories are slowly reversed in this Universe compared to the timeline of our own as the momentum of the Confederate military is recovered as it reestablishes routes of resupply. This comes to a climax in July of 1863 when General Robert E. Lee leads Confederate forces to total victory over George Meade and the Army of the Potomac in the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere; The Battle of Gettysburg. With the success of Pickett’s Charge, the lines of the Union forces are broken and the structure of their deployment collapses, leading Confederate troops to being able to route them and force them into retreat before the end of July 3rd, 1863. This victory opens a route for Lee’s invasion of the Northern territory states, ultimately resulting in Confederate capture of the city of Philadelphia on July 27th of that year. Faced with an irreversible tide of Confederate advancement and the possibility of future aid from Britain and other European powers on the side of the secessionists, US President Abraham Lincoln officially recognizes the independence of the Southern territories with the Treaty of Redding (written, signed in and named for Redding, Pennsylvania) on August 7th, 1863, concluding the war nearly two years earlier than occurred in our Universe (with the total casualties consequently also about 250,000 to 300,000 fewer) and ending it with total Confederate victory. “The War of Southern Independence”, as it comes to be known, results in the birth of the Confederate States of America, a loose confederacy that despite not existing under an overarching federal government do not balkanize into a fully independent network but instead remain diplomatically connected, as overseen by an acting President and congress, and functioning as an interrelated collective where each member-state remains autonomous to a level where states’ rights can veto the declarations of the collective governing body. The nation is divided along the Mason-Dixon Line (with the Confederacy containing Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona as well as all of the states south of that group, as well as the bottom third of what we recognize as the landmass of California) as a new territory is born. Richmond, Virginia, remains the capital of the CSA and the First White House of the Confederacy (often referred to as “The Gray House”, in reference to the color of Confederate uniforms) in Court End remains the seat of the Confederacy’s executive branch. Fireworks erupt at night in Richmond and many other Southern cities after the signing of the Treaty of Redding, and August 7th becomes celebrated in the CSA as “Southern Independence Day”. Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that “you could hear a choir of farmers, soldiers and their wives singing ''God Save the South every night for a week following the victory as word of the Treaty spread like a brushfire, the only interruption the crackle of fireworks in the skies overhead, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in our nation’s history since the Revolutionary War”. The Aftermath For The Confederacy – Freedom or Death Jefferson Davis remains as the President of the CSA until 1867 when his six year term ends. In the presidential election of that year, Robert E. Lee wins in a landslide victory over the opposing candidate, Patrick Ronayne Cleburne (another general from the War of Southern Independence), becoming the second acting President in the history of the Confederacy. In contrast with the incised and geographically reduced United States, the Confederate States undergo a post-war economic boom in the years following the war. The CSA becomes a full-fledged member on the world-stage rapidly, possessing its own unique culture divergent from that of the USA, but still distinctly American. It develops its own currency (President Robert E. Lee gracing the $1 bill as well as the 5 cent coin, President Jefferson Davis on the $10 bill and the 1 cent coin, General J.E.B. Stewart on the dime, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on the quarter, William Walker on the $20 bill and the 50 cent coin, and American favorites like Thomas Jefferson on the $5 bill, Benjamin Franklin on the $50 bill and George Washington on the $100 bill), its own national anthem (God Save the South'' by George Henry Miles),'' its own holidays (August 7th is celebrated every year as Southern Independence Day, while still retaining a celebration of July 4th as a celebration of American Independence as a whole. The period between July 4th and August 7th comes to be known as “Patriot’s Month” in the CSA, and comes to be marked by a month of intermittent celebration, various patriotic revelry and varying spates of days-off from work and school) and all the other trappings a modern nation, or confederacy, or any power participating in global politics, is expected to have. After being elected for a second term in the election of 1874 (the standard presidential term in the CSA being six years as specified in the Confederate Constitution), President Lee proposes controversial but ultimately successful legislation in 1876, namely the CSA’s version of the Emancipation Proclamation. With the rapid industrialization that occurred in the South with the post-war economic expansion, the tradition of slavery that was already beginning to degenerate before the outbreak of the war is on its last legs. Between the combinations of the growing Southern Abolitionist Movement, the obsolescence of slave-labor due to the industrial-boom and several violent and costly slave-revolts that wreak havoc in places including Charleston, Lexington and Athens, the populations of Alabama, Kentucky and New Mexico vote in 1876 to end human trafficking by 1880. As time progresses, the other members of the Confederacy follow suit one after the other until the later remainders, Louisiana, Texas and the Carolinas, agree in 1882 to have the rapidly dwindling population of remaining slaves and indentured servants freed (and compensated) by 1888. Mississippi retains slavery-laws until 1892, largely due to the state’s comparatively low slave-population resulting in lowered pressure and urgency, but ultimately has its voters decide for state-wide abolition to be mandatory by 1897, marking the end and obsolescence of legally-protected slavery in the Americas once and for all. Category:Current Year: 20th Century Category:Current Year: 1960's Category:Altered American Civil War Category:Altered America Parallels Category:Current Year: 1900's